The limitations of strategic narratives: The Sino-American struggle over the meaning of COVID-19

ABSTRACT Recent research has explored how the Sino-American narrative struggle around COVID-19 might affect power shift dynamics and world order. An underlying assumption is that states craft strategic narratives in attempts to gain international support for their understandings of reality. This article evaluates such claims taking a mixed-methods approach. It analyzes American and Chinese strategic narratives about the pandemic, and their global diffusion and resonance in regional states that are important to the U.S.-led world order: Australia, India, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. While the article confirms that strategic narratives remain a highly popular policy instrument, it argues that their efficacy appears limited. Overall, the five states in question either ignored the Sino-American narrative power battle by disseminating their own strategic narratives, or they engaged in “narrative hedging.” Moreover, even China’s narrative entrepreneurship was enabled and constrained by pre-existing master narratives integral to the current U.S.-led world order.